Germany is preparing to push back the Chinese Cosco from the port of Hamburg
Germany has classified the Tollerort terminal in the port of Hamburg as "critical": will the Chinese from Cosco be rejected? Here are facts and scenarios in the article by Pierluigi Mennitti from Berlin
There could be a twist in the story of the entry of the Chinese state company Cosco into a container terminal in the port of Hamburg. The German government is faced with new facts: according to research conducted by the investigative journalist pool made up of the regional public broadcasters NDR and WDR and the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has now classified the Tollerort terminal in matter as "critical infrastructure", which therefore requires special protection.
An indiscretion relaunched by the three newspapers and confirmed by Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (Hhla), the manager of the terminal.
THE "CRITICAL" VALUE OF THE TOLLERORT TERMINAL IN THE PORT OF HAMBURG
The new classification as critical infrastructure starts from the beginning of 2023. The BSI report speaks of "management of a transhipment facility in sea and inland ports with a cargo volume of 3.27 million tonnes per year". At Tollerort, the annual cargo volume is significantly higher, hence the change of classification, which in itself does not oblige the political authorities to automatically cancel the agreement with the Chinese, but certainly now a challenge opens up for the federal government very delicate issue.
Also because the circumstance that the Tollerort container terminal was not considered (until the end of last year) a critical infrastructure had been the central argument used by the proponents of Cosco's entry. For example, Lars Klingbeil, the federal leader of the SPD (the chancellor's party which pushed hard to reach an agreement with Cosco, had verbatim declared last December that the negotiation essentially concerned "a minority stake in a terminal and not the entry of the Chinese into a critical infrastructure". And the mayor of Hamburg Peter Tschentscher, also an SPD, had assured that "neither China nor other countries would be allowed access to critical infrastructure in Germany".
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Even the chancellor Olaf Scholz had touched on the subject, saying in general terms that it was a legitimate concern to fear foreign influences on sensitive infrastructures, but had dismissed the question of Hamburg as follows: "In this case it is not at all the case".
Now, however, the decision of the state authority for digital security changes the cards on the table, and can give breath and voice to those – the Greens above all – who had opposed the agreement between Hamburger Hafen und Logistik and Cosco right up to the last minute.
It is not yet clear why the stricter classification of the terminal by the BSI has only now been carried out, writes the information site of ARD, the first public television channel of the various regional newspapers, which hints at "difficulties in the past in the flow of information between the BSI and the management company of the port of Hamburg Hhla” which would have caused unspecified “discontent” in the government circles of Berlin. What exactly is being referred to, the three newspapers involved in the research do not say.
According to the BSI website, organizations or facilities are considered critical infrastructure if they are of particular importance to the "state community". In the event of a failure or compromise, there would be “lasting bottlenecks in supply, significant disruptions to public safety or other dramatic consequences”. And the port of Hamburg, one of the largest in Europe, is of strategic importance for the German economy.
Olaf Scholz, long mayor of the Hanseatic city, knows something about it. As chancellor he found the Tollerort terminal dossier on his desk and took the decisive steps to favor the agreement, despite the fact that liberals and greens in his government were against it.
Initially the agreement stipulated between the port company of Hamburg and Cosco provided for the acquisition of 35% of the terminal, one of the three of the Hanseatic port. The solution found by the chancellor was to allow the Chinese to acquire a lower share of 24.9%. In this way, Scholz's Sherpas argued, the state-owned Chinese group will not have a blocking minority capable of influencing the decisions of the company that manages the port terminal.
WHO SUPPORTS THE AGREEMENT WITH COSCO AND WHO DOESN'T
The political and entrepreneurial forces of Hamburg are almost all on the side of the agreement, with some distinctions only of the local Greens. The CEO of Hhla, Angela Titzrath, recently reiterated the importance of the possible entry of Cosco. The federal government must be aware of its responsibility towards the port of Hamburg, Titzrath said, recalling that China is by far the main trading partner of the port. The port authority has ensured that it has implemented all the conditions imposed by the federal government in the contracts with Cosco and is now only awaiting a response from the Ministry of Economy. Hhla also guaranteed that Cosco "will not obtain any right of access or decision with a stake in the Tollerort terminal, just as it will not obtain any rights on the land of the terminal".
According to estimates by the Kiel Economic Research Institute (IfW), about 10% of European port capacities are in the hands of Cosco, including those of Hamburg's direct competitors such as Rotterdam or Antwerp. But concerns remain about potential security risks, fears that Chinese secret services may access sensitive information on the transport of military goods through access to port computer systems, allegations that Beijing has recently described as "excessively paranoid".
The fact is that some political forces at the federal level (Greens, Christian Democrats, to a large extent also the liberals) believe that after what happened with Russia, a policy of greater attention towards close commercial and political relations with authoritarian states is appropriate. Starting with China. In the coming weeks we will see how much the new revelations on the Hamburg port terminal will affect the last steps towards the agreement with Cosco.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/cosco-porto-amburgo-colpo-di-scena/ on Fri, 14 Apr 2023 04:51:49 +0000.